Gramps, formerly GRAMPS (an

acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...

for Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Programming System), is a free and

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

genealogy software. It is developed in Python using

PyGObject PyGTK is a set of Python (programming language), Python Adapter pattern, wrappers for the GTK graphical user interface library (computer science), library. PyGTK is free software and licensed under the LGPL. It is analogous to PyQt/PySide and w ...

and utilizes

Graphviz Graphviz (short for ''Graph Visualization Software'') is a package of open-source software, open-source tools initiated by AT&T Labs, AT&T Labs Research for Graph drawing, drawing graph (discrete mathematics), graphs (as in Vertex (graph theory ...

to create relationship graphs. Gramps represents a form of commons-based peer production, created by genealogists for genealogists. Beyond human family trees, the software has been used to create animal pedigree charts and academic genealogies that map mentoring relationships among scientists, physicians, and scholars.

Features

Gramps is a widely used offline genealogy software suite. Its features include: * Support for multiple languages and cultural contexts, including

patronymic A patronymic, or patronym, is a component of a personal name based on the given name of one's father, grandfather (more specifically an avonymic), or an earlier male ancestor. It is the male equivalent of a matronymic. Patronymics are used, b ...

matronymic A matronymic is a personal name or a parental name based on the given name of one's mother, grandmother, or any female ancestor. It is the female equivalent of a patronymic. Around the world, matronymic surnames are far less common than patrony ...

, and multiple surname systems. * Full

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

compatibility. * Relationship calculators, which accommodate language-specific relationship terminologies that lack direct translations in other languages. * The ability to generate reports in various formats, such as .odt,

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latices are found in nature, but synthetic latices are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a wikt:milky, milky fluid, which is present in 10% of all floweri ...

, .

pdf Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

, .rtf, .

html Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

, and . txt. * Tools for creating a wide range of reports and charts, including relationship graphs of large, complex acyclic charts. * Extendability through more than 10 types of plugins. These plugins include Gramplets and Views; Gramplets provide dynamic or interactive views of data within the main Gramps interface. * An event-centric documentation approach, similar to the

CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model The CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM) provides an extensible ontology for concepts and information in cultural heritage and museum documentation. It is the international standard (ISO 21127:2023) for the controlled exchange of cultural he ...

used by many cultural heritage institutions. * A "sanity check" feature that flags improbable events, such as births involving individuals at unlikely ages. * Support for multiple calendar systems, including Gregorian, Julian, and Islamic calendars. * Comprehensive programmer's API documentation, with free and open-source code made publicly available

File format

The core archival file format of Gramps is named Gramps XML and uses the

file extension File or filing may refer to: Mechanical tools and processes * File (tool), a tool used to remove fine amounts of material from a workpiece. ** Filing (metalworking), a material removal process in manufacturing ** Nail file, a tool used to gen ...

.gramps. It is extended from

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

. Gramps XML is a free format, and its files are usually compressed using

gzip gzip is a file format and a software application used for file compression and decompression. The program was created by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler as a free software replacement for the compress program used in early Unix systems, and ...

. The file format Portable Gramps XML Package uses the extension .gpkg and is currently a .tar.gz archive including Gramps XML together with all referenced media. Users may rename the file extension .gramps to .gz for editing the content of the genealogy document with a text editor. Internally, Gramps uses

SQLite SQLite ( "S-Q-L-ite", "sequel-ite") is a free and open-source relational database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it ...

as the default database backend, with other databases available as plugins. Gramps can import from the following formats: Gramps XML, Gramps Package (Portable Gramps XML), Gramps 2.x .grdb (older versions Gramps),

GEDCOM FamilySearch GEDCOM, or simply GEDCOM ( , acronym of ''Genealogical Data Communication''), is an open file format and the de facto standard specification for storing genealogical data. It was developed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...

, CSV. Gramps supports exporting data in the following formats: Gramps XML, Gramps Package (Portable Gramps XML),

, GeneWeb's GW format, Web Family Tree (.WFT) format,

vCard vCard, also known as VCF ("Virtual Contact File"), is a file format standard for electronic business cards. vCards can be attached to e-mail messages, sent via Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), on the World Wide Web, instant messaging, N ...

, vCalendar, CSV.

Programs that support Gramps XML

Gramps Web
is a collaborative web app built on the core of Gramps itself and supports Gramps XML import and export
Betty
by Bart Feenstra generates static websites from Gramps XML and Gramps XML Package files as alternatives to GEDCOM. *

PhpGedView PhpGedView is a Free Software, free PHP-based web application for working with genealogy data on the Internet. The project was founded and is headed by John Finlay. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License, GPL-2.0-or-later license. Ph ...

(version 4.1 and up) supports output to Gramps XML. * The Gramps

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared towards web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by the PHP Group. ...

component JoomlaGen for

Joomla Joomla (), also styled Joomla! (with an exclamation mark) and sometimes abbreviated as J!, is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content on websites. Web content applications include discussion forums, p ...

uses an upload of the GRAMPS XML database export to show genealogical information and overviews. JoomlaGen is compatible with GRAMPS 3.3.0. * The script tmg2gramps by Anne Jessel converts The Master Genealogist v6 genealogy software datafile to a Gramps v2.2.6 XML.

Languages

Gramps is available in 45 languages (As of December 2014). Gramps has two special-use sub-translation languages: * ''Animal pedigree'' which allows to keep track of the pedigree and breed of animals * ''Same gender/sex'' which gives the option of removing gender-biased verbiage from reports.

Release history

The project began as GRAMPS in 2001, and the first stable release was in 2004. The following table shows a selected history of new feature releases for project. (Patches and bug fixes are published on GitHub and periodically collated in minor "bug fix" releases.)
Full history of previous releases

Features

File format

Programs that support Gramps XML

Languages

Release history

References

External links